Ferns of British India and Ceylon. 413 



long, f inch broad, very thick and fleshy, and when young more or 

 less covered with stellate hairs, the fertile ones, 2-4 inches long ^— | 

 inch broad; veins immersed, areoles with copious free veinlets; soii 

 in broad continuous marginal lines often at length confluent and 

 covering the whole under surface, capsules mixed with a few stellate 

 paraphyses. Pre si. Tent. Pterid. 227, t. 10. Bedd. F. S. I. t. 55 

 and F. S. I. t. 186 (Niphobolus nummularifolius). 



Bengal Plains ; Birma ; Ceylon ; South India, common in the 

 Malabar plains, (Calicut, &c. on trees), also on the mountains, up to 

 about 2,000 feet elevation, (Anamallays, Wynad, Coorg, &c.) 



(Also in Java Philippines and Japan.) 



Var. /3 Beddomei. Mr. Clarke proposes the name Beddomei 

 for a specimen from the Anamallays figured by me (tab. 186, 

 F S. I.) because the fronds have stellate hairs and the scales of the 

 rhizome are more pointed, but I find this stellate pubescence is 

 always more or less present on the young fronds of Himalayan 

 examples, and the rhizome scales are quite as hair-pointed in some 

 specimens from Java, Philippines, and Japan, the fertile fronds are 

 shorter and narrower in this South Indian form, and the broader 

 usually sterile fronds sometimes fructify towards the apex, but I am 

 not inclined to consider it even a permanent variety, as I believe 

 it runs into the type with longer fertile fronds, which is also found in 

 Southern India. 



(Niphobolus nummularifolius, though I have included it in that 

 genus, rather belongs heie, it has exactly similar venation.) 



GENUS LXXX.— HEMIONITIS. (Z.) 



(He/nionos,^ mule — the mule fern.) 



Sori continuous along the veins and copiously reticulated ; veins 

 copiously anastomosing, forming numerous areoles which have rarely 

 a free veinlet in them, which when present is also soriferous ; fronds 

 adherent to the caudex, simple, pinnatifid, or pinnate. 



1. IIi.mionitis ARIFOLIA. (/> 'itrni . under A \spletlium .) Caudex 



